Gizmodgery (thing)

Gizmodgery was, of course, recorded with toy instruments by Self as the above writeup states. However, this was not a "musical breakthrough". Pianosaurus is usually credited with the birth of composing pop rock music purely with toy instruments, and they did it in the late 1980’s without help from Pro Tools or any of the other crazy production techniques used on Gizmodgery.

This isn’t to say that Gizmodgery isn’t a great album, though, because it really is amazing. The melody and structure that Matt Mahaffey can get from the toys is incredible, even if it is heavily manipulated. He uses the following toy instruments on the recording:

Another form of making music with toy instruments is known as circuit bending. Circuit bending is the art of rewiring toy instruments and turning them into completely different (and noisy) instruments.